Managing human resources is not an easy task, especially and when it comes to complex and touchy issues such as managing leaves or framing/changing a company leave policy, things can often get murky and make all the stakeholders uncomfortable. In addition to remunerations, many candidate takes into account the leave policy of a company before joining. Approving leaves is a delicate balancing act. On one hand, HR has to ensure compliance with leave policy and ensure availability of sufficient resources for business continuance, while on the other it has to improve employee satisfaction.
While many companies may not take leave management seriously, research shows that poor leave management/ manual leave management has had a bad impact on business performance. It can impact project deliveries and employee morale negatively. Here are some critical business issues, directly related to leave management:
Meeting project delivery deadlines: Availability of manpower directly impacts the project delivery schedules. While committing to delivery dates, managers need to keep in mind the availability of sufficient resources.
Emotional factors: Getting leaves on time is a major employee satisfaction factor. Employees have several personal needs which require their absence from work.
Financial implications: Accrued leaves are financial liabilities on organizations, especially paid and privileged leaves. If employees do not take enough leaves, the financial liability of the organization increases and the HR should report this to management at regular intervals.
Performance vs. leaves: Work-life balance has a direct impact on an employee’s performance. Both, employees who do not take enough leaves (and suffer from stress) and employees who take too many leaves (and are careless towards job) have negative impact on their performance.
Role of leave management system
Maintaining compliance or managing leave data can be difficult when done manually or by using excel. Effective leave management system is very necessary to simplify leave management and add value by streamlining the organization’s leave data. Here are some key challenges that an automated leave management system can resolve:
Accurate information: Provides accurate information about leave balances, leave trends etc. which allows you to forecast available resources at any point of time.
Conveying policy rules: Uses in-built systems to convey leave policy rules like maximum / minimum number of days, holiday calendar management according to location etc. Employees can, at any time, refer to the leave policy before applying for vacation days.
Compliance to leave policy: Often, lack of knowledge about organizational leave policies, lead to negligence of leave policy rules by employees and managers. A leave management system uses inherent rules that do not allow employees or managers to bypass rules while applying for or approving leaves.
Instant information about employee’s leave history: Allows manager and HR to look at leave history of the applicant. Leave history for the department or company can also be extracted immediately.
Saves time: Online leave balance visibility can remove a tremendous strain on HR where as much as 15% of their time is spent in handling queries on leave balance for employees.
Improves discipline: Leave, when paired with attendance, can improve accuracy and build discipline in any organization.
If you are an HR Manager, a CEO or a Line Manager who want to deploy an effective leave management system , our consultants will be happy to discuss your leave management issues and guide you with appropriate solutions.